WEEK 1

REWINDING LAST SEMESTER

LAST SEMESTER

During last semester, a number of prototype drawings have been developed. These drawings have been developed which shifted the project direction focusing on the aspect of motivating Kanji learning rather than promoting the accessibility of the Japanese language
The drawings were referenced from the Kanji learning material Remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig widely used by English-speaking learners, and I will first go through the material and show how it proceeds to me emerge in the creation of those drawings

Drawings carried from last semester

Drawings carried from last semester referencing Remember the Kanji by James W. Heisig

REMEMBERING THE KANJI

Looking into the material, it has been noted as the author uses his own ideas in words which are regarded as a strength in providing learners to easily remember the kanji structure. Kanjis have been introduced in a systematic order starting with the most basic kanji which includes the primitive elements.

They explained how the character is formed from its stroke which forms a story and also indicates its direct meaning. While the later and more complicated ones have been explained with a plot regarding its components broken from that character. This provides a sense of mnemonic learning practice as this notion has been mentioned in Yoshiko Mori and Hideko Shimizu's paper since Heisig's attempt creates learning opportunities in terms of 'encoding techniques or mental images of the items to be learned' (2007, 475).

Published in 2011 for the sixth edition, the context remains delivered in a written format without any visual language, as it has been seen as 'traditional' from my personal point of view with the include of stroke order. That connects to my research carried outside of studio, where the interview carried out with my ex-Japanese teacher Fusako Ota mentioned the learning of kanji stroke orders has led to an obsolete due to the spread of digital media (Ota, Zoom, June).

Besides, being able to recall the kanji is a daily effort that probably might take months and years as referred to the reviews written by Australian-based purchasers on Amazon. Where to some extent the ideas provided by Heisig in the book can also involve the reputation of learners' memorising the stories over and over again throughout a period of time.

The mentioned aspects expose the weaknesses of the material hence leading to a threat to English speakers' learning. This suggests further exploration of association methods, or mnemonics that can be applied to help generate mental images of those logographic characters, inspiring me to form a foundation of combining my skills in illustration for my project.

Bibliography

Heisig, James W. 2011. Remembering the Kanji. Honolulu: University Of Hawaiʻi Press.

Mori, Yoshiko, and Hideko Shimizu. 2007. “Japanese Language Students’ Attitudes TowardKanjiand Their Perceptions OnKanjiLearning Strategies.” Foreign Language Annals 40, no. 3 (October): 472–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2007.tb02871.x.

Fusako Ota, Zoom interview meeting, 2023.

DRAWING EXPERIMENTS

REFINEMENT DRAWINGS

From the past drawings carried out last semester, it has been found the kanji character of Tsuki, 月 brings out the most distracting elements for the learners as that might not effectively assist their memorisation of Kanjis
This led me to simplify the illustrative elements into two different drawing approaches, which the left one I used the entire shape of a moon to form the kanji illustration since its character just looks like a moon people usually see during the night
Whereas for the right one, I visualised one of the strokes into a moon combining with the actual kanji strokes but filled with another illustration of the moon
The pros found in the left one were it looks interesting and is easier to memorise in terms of its illustrative context, but people may misunderstand that's exactly the way how it is being written. As the right one people might get confused about why there are two moons at the same time and learners may perceive the kanji as 月 is being formed by 2 moons. Hence two of the ideas may be combined which I will further in the later weeks

Using the shape of the moon to form the character Tsuki, 月. Brushstrokes have been drawing around the entire character itself since I wanted to apply it as an element of moonlight

Using the visualisation of strokes combined with strokes from the actual kanji character filled with illustrations

I refined the character Hoshi 星, star by reconsidering the concept of how the smaller stars sparkle and connecting themselves together into a constellation that forms 星

NEW KANJI DRAWINGS

In these two new drawings at the top right, I applied the developed elements from last semester's kanji drawings, Mizu 水 (water) on Kawa 川 (river); and Hi 火 (fire) on Netsu 熱 (heat, describing objects) as the developed elements correspond to the meanings of these new illustrated kanji
This gives me an opportunity to experiment with the way the developed elements from last semester can be applied to the new kanjis which could form a series/thread as a kanji cooperate system, which can be also further explored

Kawa 川; river, brushstrokes formed next to the entire character indicating the flowing water element occurs on the river

Atsu/Netsu 熱; heat describing objects. As noted there is another kanji that also describes heat which is 暑, I used a frypan element that could suggest the word 熱 is used by learners for describing the heat while cooking food

Atsu 暑; heat describing hot weather conditions, I have used a different illustrative approach here but not applying the fire element from last semester from Hi 火 since the hot weather condition does not really have things related to fire waves so I visualise the 2 日 (sun) components within 暑 by adding sunlight rays to indicate summer heat. In the above experiments, visualising kanjis from the heat category lets me differentiate how these characters could be learned by their different meanings considering from an English background learner's perspective

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